Debating a possible third term for supervisors

Voters clamped a two-term limit on San Joaquin County supervisors in 1998. Now supervisors want voters to relent and allow them a third term. Should we?

Michael Fitzgerald

Voters clamped a two-term limit on San Joaquin County supervisors in 1998. Now supervisors want voters to relent and allow them a third term. Should we?

The question has become charged because one supervisor, Leroy Ornellas, opposes the move as self-serving.

"You do your public service - whether its two years or 10 - then go home," Ornellas said. "But it's hard for some people to get in there - to any position - and to get better seats at restaurants, and those kinds of things, and suddenly it's taken from you. It is hard for some people to adjust to that."

Ornellas' position is ... complicated. He didn't "go home"; he ran unsuccessfully for state Senate. Should Measure D allow supes a third term, he's ineligible to run in November.

Also forgotten is that Ornellas was elected to office two years into a four-year term, after an incumbent resigned. He later sued successfully to perfect his right to two more full terms. Extra time in office was OK then.

Ornellas himself moved to put a third term before voters. But his motion scrupulously called for the five supervisors to place it on the ballot at their cost.

His motion also called for the three-term system, if voters approved, to kick in after sitting supervisors termed out. Instead supes voted 4-1 to charge taxpayers the cost of the ballot and take the third term themselves.

The ballot cost is disputed. The range is $50,000 to $135,000.

"It troubles me greatly that we are using public funds ... to fund this initiative so that these fellas can stay in office another four years," Ornellas said. "That is the worst thing of all."

Board of Supervisors Chairman Steve Bestolarides countered that when voters approved term limits in 1998, they did so at public cost, too.

Yes, but the 1998 measure came after a petition drive, meaning broad public support. This time, there's no passionate public groundswell of supplicants begging supervisors to stay in office. This measure is being done at the behest of four supervisors who want the public to fund their ambitions.

Their campaign is legal. In deciding if it is for the best, it would help to know if a third term is in the public interest or supervisors' interest. Or both.

Financially, there is no net cost to taxpayers if supervisors serve a third term. But supervisors definitely have a financial motivation to seek a third term.

Supervisor compensation is $129,630 a year. Another four years equals more than a half-million dollars for them.

Now add pension enrichment. Omitting any other years of government service, an additional four years will bump up their pensions by up to $240,000, according to the county Employee Retirement Association.

The chairman makes even more; but Bestolarides has turned it down.

In fact, more than one supe has turned down automatic raises, one bit of evidence their motives are loftier than money.

On the other hand, Supervisor Larry Ruhstaller, whose restaurant went under, is in Chapter 13 bankruptcy. Ruhstaller must pay off numerous debts.

Ruhstaller, too, insists he is in it for the greater good.

"I love this job," he said. "There has never, ever been a question in the eight years I was with the City Council or this time I looked at this as being a way of personal gain."

Ruhstaller has become an effective advocate for the Delta, among other things. That's the sort of hard-won expertise worth retaining, Bestolarides argued.

The county hospital lost $150 million in seven years before Bestolarides and others researched new approaches; last year the loss dropped to $10 million.

And, "We went from being nowhere on the front of water rights to being on the forefront in five counties," he said.

Of course, it could be argued that supervisors achieved these gains in two terms, meaning the system works fine as is.

Some hold politics to be corrupting; term limits, they believe, purge the system. Data also show term limits have allowed more women and minority candidates to gain office. On the downside, term limits deny a voter the right to choose experience, said Bob Benedetti, head of the Jacoby Center for Public Service and Civic Leadership.

"People rightly believe experience counts," Benedetti said. When imposing term limits, "It is denying experience, and with that, it is denying leadership."

The last word (for now) comes from Ornellas. At the supervisors' meeting of June 15, 2010, he spoke on representing the county on an air quality board and its complex issues.

"In my opinion," Ornellas said, "we are at a disadvantage here in San Joaquin County, and that is because of the term limits that we have on ourselves. We no sooner get to be here on that committee and get our eight (or) six years' experience, then we're out. And the other board members have got eight, 10, 12, 20 years' experience. And I think just about the time ... I was leaving is about the time I would get it all."